Stuffed Peppers Redeemed

Here at ES, I am not ashamed to admit my kitchen defeats. I am pretty sure that if I did the math, fully half of my all-time posts would be of the, ahem, failure variety. I could claim that when you cook as much as I do, failure is inevitable at some point. Or maybe those incidents are just the most fun to document. But rarely have I failed so fully and spectacularly as when I attempted to make stuffed peppers several years ago. I actually think I won some kind of fake ES award for that particular post. Something about “world’s most disgusting pictures.” Won’t be including that one in the resume.

So, when I picked up some poblano peppers on sale a few weeks back, I knew it was time for some redemption. Lest I enter the shameful “messing up the same recipe twice” club, I decided to keep it simple. No breading, no grapefruit (grapefruit? What the hell was I thinking?), no vain attempts to roast and skin these bad boys. I’m still no Bobby Flay (you know he would have grilled those suckers) but at least the result was edible. Redemption complete.

Easy Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

Four poblano peppers, halved and seeded

1 medium onion, chopped

2 T. olive oil

2 c. cooked rice

1 can diced tomatoes with juices

1 T. cumin

1 T. chili powder

1 can black beans

2 c. sharp cheddar cheese

Bring 1 quart of salted water to a boil.

Add peppers and cook for 5 minutes.

Remove peppers from water, and place open side up on a cookie sheet. In a medium skillet, saute onions in olive oil until soft and starting to brown. Add rice, tomatoes and spices. Cook until tomato juice is absorbed.

Glad my picture was appetizing this time around. As for the grapefruit, it was meant as part of the filling, and I suppressed my doubts in the face of the recipe author’s enthusiasm. This was a bad idea. I like grapefruit, but it does not combine well with black beans. Lesson learned.